


And darkly bright,

by togethertheyfightcrime



Series: trepidation of the spheres [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Childhood, Dreams, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, Holmes Brothers' Childhood, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kidlock, Loneliness, Storytelling, Suicide Attempt, Teenlock (kind of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 03:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1536047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togethertheyfightcrime/pseuds/togethertheyfightcrime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come along, little prince, come along, the branches whispered; come up and come dancing, there's nothng left below.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And darkly bright,

**Author's Note:**

> Gaurika in her lovely comment on _[as heaven's sphere is greater than the earth](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1022750)_ requested more, and fairy tales weave themselves around Sherlock so well in my mind, so here we are.

_You’re here for a story. But you’ve come at the wrong time._

 

_There was once a lonely little prince in a lonely little manor all swathed by forest dark as night, and he romped in the woods with his dreams. Life lived and life pretended are not so very different to a child with the wind beneath his feet, and so there were monsters in the hollowed earth and towers in the trees, and the moon grinned cold and white with light he curled between his fingers, and he chased the tiny scuttling things that hid in the between spaces._

 

_And he was the only child in the world._

 

_The wind swirled impossible colours through the clattering, laughing branches, and he heard them when he peeked up at winking slips of night._

 

_Go on, go on, little prince, they giggled, come up and come dancing; we won’t let you fall._

 

_But the little prince had kept one of his elder brother’s eyes, even when his elder brother went away to become a black-suit man, and the little prince was left to keep himself. It was pale and careful and still, the eye, and through it the little prince saw that he was all alone inside the shadows even though they danced so prettily, and he was scared enough to walk the patterned starlight patches all the way back to the manor._

 

_Then time started unraveling and the little prince wasn’t so little anymore, but he never stopped being beautiful and he never stopped being lonely. The jesters came with sculpted faces and he saw past their masks of glass, but he learned their song and loved the dance and pretended, for a little while, to be only a silent pauper._

 

_The wizard should have come by now, the runes started dancing with little ink-feet across curling parchment. Wasn’t there a dragon beneath the manor, a whisper in the woods?_

 

_One day he found the sandman’s dust, dreams tied into a package, or so they said, so they told him. The little prince was older now so he breathed in the shadow’s shavings and tried to pull the shadows around himself again, tried to carve out his heart and be nothing but bones. It broke him, the false dreaming, burned through him from the inside out._

 

_When he landed he shattered, but it was only then he realised he’d been falling._

 

_Everyone saw the insides of the prince, who wasn’t so grown-up after all, and they were only blood and breath like anyone else. The prince was broken and found himself wandering in corridors of forgotten light, hearing songs without sense and words without meaning, and then, in the darkness, in the spaces between nightmares, he heard the wind laugh at him again:_

 

_Come along, little prince, come along, it said; there’s nothing left below, come up and come dancing with the night._

 

_The prince found himself a little boy again, lost and lonely and hurting and scared, and he found his hidden coiled nightmares with a needle’s pricking edge buried deep in a drawer, and he knew it’d take a fall but when he landed he’d be flying, flying–_

 

_–wouldn’t he?_

 

_It takes trust to hand away your death to a stranger who once was your keeper; it takes, though they’d never say it, love. Long, long ago, his brother had given him eyes to see past the shadows to the truth; the prince had broken them beneath his heels and ran away with footprints of blood. But his brother never stopped trailing behind, pristine and perfect and just as alone, and so the prince gave up, gave in, and found himself in a strange, complete rest._

 

_He watched as his brother crushed the needle of dreams beneath his heel and waited for his mind to shift the puzzle-pieces of himself together again, one day. Outside, somewhere, there was a manor, now all alone with silent trees. Outside, somewhere, there was a steadfast soldier, with weary arms and careful hands, and perhaps, perchance, the soldier and the prince could build themselves a castle. Outside, somewhere, past the shadows and the branches, the sun was pale and gold and thin, and yet still, it was shining._

 


End file.
